A conservative, not a zealot

When a coalition of liberal groups including People for the American Way and Planned Parenthood unite to declare war on a man, and The New York Times cheers them on, it can mean only one thing: Someone is about to get Borked.

To "Bork" someone is to smear him as a racist, misogynistic monster on the fringes of the political spectrum in order to derail a nomination. The original Borking victim, of course, was Judge Robert Bork himself, who, despite being a brilliant and experienced judge, was denied a seat on the Supreme Court thanks to the efforts of these liberal groups.

In Bork's America, we learned, women would be sterilized against their will, blacks would be sent back to the Jim Crow era and innocent citizens would find their homes raided by armed agents in the night. Of course, none of this was true. Bork simply had the audacity to oppose Roe v. Wade — he was "pro-choice" in the sense that he thought people should get to vote on this issue — and presented himself as a strict constructionist in general. As such, he was anathema to the liberals' worldview. Hence, the smear campaign.

Now we are seeing the beginnings of a new Borking, against Sen. John Ashcroft, President-elect George W. Bush's nominee for attorney general. The same liberal groups have become apoplectic. How dare a conservative president nominate a conservative attorney general? Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) whined that Ashcroft was "a divisive, not unifying nomination," even though Bush "has said he is a uniter not a divider." Kerry, oddly, was not nearly so upset by Clinton's lefty picks eight years ago, even though Clinton, who received a far lower percentage of the vote in 1992 than Bush did in 2000, should have felt an even greater need to unite the country.

Ashcroft — a former senator, governor and state attorney general — is a conservative. The son of an Assemblies of God minister, he does not drink or dance. He is strongly pro-life (hardly an extremist view — so is the majority of his party). He supports Second Amendment rights (as does the majority of his party). He, like Bork, is against "judicial activism" or legislating from the bench (as is the majority of his party). In short, he is a full-blooded heartland Republican, unlike some RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) who serve as senators and governors of northeastern states.

So he, too, is anathema to the liberal worldview, a world where people keep their pesky religions out of the public sphere, abortion is a sacrament, criminals would stop killing people if we just took away law-abiding citizens' guns and the Constitution is a "living document" that was really meant to enforce, conveniently enough, a liberal worldview.

The first step in a Borking is to hint that someone is a racist (par for the course for liberals, for whom a "bigot" is a conservative who is winning an argument with a liberal). Ashcroft, we learn, convinced his Senate colleagues to vote against a black Missouri judge's appointment to the federal bench. Clearly, the groups say, a case of racism.

But if Ashcroft is a racist, he's a pretty bad one, having voted to confirm 90 percent of the black judicial nominees that came before him. And if voting against a black judge makes one a racist, there are 48 current and former senators including Al Gore who have some explaining to do for their votes against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

The second step in a Borking is to enlist the willing media to carry out the character assassination. The New York Times has been happy to help. The headline on the Midwestern edition the morning of the nomination was "Conservative for Attorney General, Whitman to head EPA." Ashcroft didn't even appear in the headline. The editorial department declared war, devoting 75 percent of its op-ed page on Saturday to trashing the man. Ashcroft was a "hard turn to the right."

To complete the Borking, these groups will invent a litany of sins: misogyny (Planned Parenthood will probably air ads claiming Ashcroft's first move as attorney general will be to ban the pill), homophobia (just for good measure), "extremism," "zealotry" and so forth. Subpoena his Blockbuster receipts to see if he ever rented porn (doubtful). Completely misquote him (the Southern Partisan interview morphs from "Robert E. Lee was a patriot" to "Ashcroft supports slavery").

I hope the Senate will confirm one of its own, and that the liberal coalition will appear more "extreme" than Ashcroft to everyone not living on university campuses.

But given what they did before, I'm not optimistic. Hopefully if Ashcroft is defeated, Bush will have the guts to turn around and nominate Robert Bork. It would serve the liberals right. Laura Vanderkam is a Wilson School major from Granger, Ind. She can be reached at laurav@princeton.edu.